Update on next tutorial/example

Here's an update on what I have planned next.

I wanted to jump right into shadows next, but I realized that there's a few prerequisites before we get to that. One of those is rendering to a framebuffer/texture, and another is getting a depth map from another camera. So, next up is handling both of those. In addition, cube maps would be needed to handle shadows from point lights, so that's another topic to add.

However, my job is going to be picking up soon, and these require a lot of changes to the existing code that would take a lot of time to make as another tutorial in the series. Like before, I'm considering doing examples instead of tutorials here on out, so we can cover more topics in less time. The examples would still break down the new stuff, but they won't follow the process of adding it to the previous topic's project files.

Here the TV screen is showing the view from a second camera (the second camera is at the arrow)

Here it is rendering the depth information from the other camera

Update on Next Tutorial

I wanted to give everyone an update on the next tutorial, since it's been a while.

As you can see in the pictures, there's multiple lights at once, specular maps (look at the difference between the land and ocean), and spot lights. This code also includes directional lighting, but I think it didn't make the pictures.

I'm sorry to let this take so long. Life has been busy, but it should be less busy relatively soon.

The other problem has been trying to break this tutorial up into manageable chunks. I may have to switch to making it into an annotated example project instead of a tutorial (which might be better overall, and would let me make more content). Feel free to leave comments if you have any feelings about this (and I know some people have asked for that sort of change in the past).

Progress Update

It's been a while, and I want to fill everyone in on what/when the next tutorial will be. This weekend is the first time I haven't had a million other projects I should be doing, so I was able to make some real progress.

The next tutorial is going to be broken into two parts (for length's sake, but Part 1 will be useful on its own). 

The first part will handle loading more complex OBJ files, and loading materials from MTL files. The OBJ loader we already had only works on really, really simple OBJ files, and it won't cut it for loading most models with texture maps.

The second part will put this to better use by adding some simple lighting to the project.


Expect the whole thing before the end of the month. After the next tutorial, I plan on making a model viewer example to show what can be done.

Navigation changes

Quick update here, changed the blog navigation (at the top) to make things a little nicer. There's a list of all the tutorials so you won't have to search anymore (it'll end up being a bigger issue as time goes on), a downloads page for older tutorials (content being uploaded as fast as I can) and a list of expected future tutorials too. I'm still really busy with work right now, but the next tutorial will get hopefully not take too much longer to be finished.

My New Year's Resolutions

It's that time of year, so I'm going to set some goals for the near future. I've been really busy with work lately, but I'd like to post more content here:

Chain Jam Afterthoughts

The Copenhagen Game Collective just started a new style of game jam called the Chain Jam. The gimmick of the jam is that everyone makes a very small game for four players, and after a minute the players are funneled into another game, with the scoring staying between games. It's a fun idea, and easy enough to make a game for.

I made a game for it, called Four v. Horde. It's basically Left 4 Dead, but simpler, top-down and made by me in most of a day (instead of a semi-competitive FPS made by Valve over a year). Players try to kill the most zombies without being killed themselves.

While making it, I realized a few things about the Chain Jam concept:

Unnamed New Game - Gravity Test

This is just a little thing I was working on right now. Eventually this will be part of a real game. Eventually.

It's pretty obviously incomplete (there's no background, or loss condition, or menus, and it doesn't keep spawning things as you move away), but it's almost a start.
You can move the "player" (the one at the center of the screen) with either WASD or the arrow keys, add new bodies to the simulation with the numpad's plus key and reset it with the 'r' key.